That storekeeper back in Bracken’s Crossing could have told him, he thought. Of course, it was possible the man hadn’t known about Sam MacCrae’s death, especially if it had occurred recently.
“You have my condolences,” Luke said. “If you don’t mind my asking, how long ago . . . ?”
“Three months.” Glory glanced down at the riding clothes she wore and went on: “I know, these aren’t exactly widow’s weeds, are they? But I don’t have time to sit around in a dark room with a veil over my face, weeping and wailing. There’s a ranch that has to be run. The last thing in the world Sam would have wanted was for me to let things go to hell around here.”
She was good, Luke thought. Every word out of her mouth sounded genuine and sincere, but he knew she was lying through her teeth. The most likely explanation was that she had killed Sam MacCrae, gotten away with it somehow without being suspected, and now intended to strip her late husband’s ranch of every penny she could before she disappeared again.
“I did my mourning for a few days,” Glory was saying as those thoughts ran through Luke’s brain. “Gabe and the other men kept things going. But then it was time to move forward again instead of looking back. I had my time with Sam. It was too short, but other than that it . . . it was everything a woman could ask for.”
That little catch in her voice was perfect. Anybody else hearing it would believe that deep down she was still devastated by the loss of her husband.
“How long were you married?” Luke asked.
“Three months. Like I said, not nearly long enough.”
But long enough for Sam MacCrae to have changed his will, Luke was willing to bet. Wasn’t anybody around here suspicious of this woman? Had she managed to fool them all just because she was beautiful?
They came to a place where the bluff had caved in, a long time in the past. An easy trail led to the top. As they rode up it, Luke glanced back and saw Pendleton and the other MC hands strung out behind them. One of the cowboys was leading a horse with the dead man draped over the saddle.
“How far is it to your headquarters?”
“About five miles,” Glory said. “It’s over there at the edge of those foothills to the west.”
A couple of ranges of small mountains, not much more than hills themselves, bordered the valley on the northeast and southwest. The settlement of Painted Post was ten or twelve miles back to the southeast. This whole area between the mountain ranges was known as Sabado Valley—Sabbath Valley, in English—and it all belonged to Glory MacCrae now. Some of the landscape Luke could see was brown and arid, but a large swath of the valley was verdant with grass and brush. Luke wasn’t a cattleman, but he had been around enough ranches to know good grazing land when he saw it.
Maybe Glory wasn’t planning on running out after all. Maybe she was sincere about keeping the ranch going. It was possible she had lucked into something by marrying Sam MacCrae, something that would allow her to settle down.
Of course, she still had a murder charge hanging over her head, and unless Luke missed his guess, that wasn’t the only murder she had committed. He had to pretend to be taken in by the web of lies she was spinning, but he couldn’t let himself actually be convinced she was telling the truth.
She was worth five thousand dollars, after all!
They passed more cattle as they rode, good-looking animals, Luke thought, although he wasn’t really a judge of such things. After a few minutes, Glory said, “You never did tell me what you’re doing on this range, Mr. Jensen.”
“I’m headed for El Paso,” Luke said, “but I’m taking my time getting there and seeing some of the country while I’m at it.”
“What’s in El Paso? Family? Friends?”
For a long time after the war, Luke hadn’t had either of those things in his life. He hadn’t even known at first that the famous gunman Smoke Jensen was really his little brother Kirby.
Since then he had met not only Smoke, but also their adopted brother, Matt, along with the old mountain man known as Preacher who had been Smoke’s mentor for many years. So, yeah, he had family now, and friends, and they were the same.
But in answer to Glory’s question he said, “No, none of that. But I’m told there’s always a big poker game going on in the bar of the Camino Real Hotel.”
Glory laughed and said, “So you’re a gambler?”
“When you get up in the morning, you’re betting that you’ll make it through the day, aren’t you? And when you lay your head down at night, you’ve made a wager that you’ll wake up again.”
“That’s a rather . . . fatalistic way of looking at things, isn’t it?”
“I suppose you’re right,” Luke said with a chuckle of his own. “Let’s just say I enjoy a good game of cards.”
“Fine. That means it won’t be keeping you from anything important if you have dinner with me tonight and stay a day or two.”
It didn’t escape Luke’s notice that she had gone from asking him to spend the night at the ranch to saying that he could stay a day or two. He didn’t comment on it, though.
They came within sight of the ranch headquarters. It was a fine-looking place. The house was whitewashed adobe with a tile roof and several cottonwood trees around it. A long, low adobe bunkhouse sat to one side. There were a couple of barns built of rough-planed lumber with a network of corrals between and around them. Other outbuildings were scattered here and there. Luke could tell the ranch was successful.
A couple of big, shaggy dogs, one yellow, and one gray and brown, ran out to greet them with full-throated barks. A woman with gray hair braided and wrapped around her head came out of the main house, and a couple of young punchers emerged from one of the barns. One of the youngsters hurried up and took hold of the headstall on Glory’s horse as she reined to a halt.
“I’ll put him up for you, ma’am,” the boy said. He was a stocky, redheaded youngster with a scattering of freckles across his face.
“Thank you, Ernie,” Glory told him, and as she expressed her gratitude a smile as bright as the sun broke out on the boy’s face. He looked like he’d just been given the world’s best present on Christmas morning.
Glory swung down from the saddle, and so did Luke. Glory said to the other young man, “Vince, take care of Mr. Jensen’s horse, will you?”
“Sure,” Vince said. He was taller, leaner, and darker than Ernie, and he looked like it would take a lot more than a fleeting smile from Glory MacCrae to make him beam like the sun.
The other hands who had been with Gabe Pendleton during the fight with the rustlers were headed for the barn, except for Pendleton and the cowboy leading the dead man’s horse. Pendleton hipped around slightly in his saddle, peered to the north, and said, “Company coming, Miz MacCrae.”
“Can you tell who it is?” Glory asked.
Pendleton’s voice hardened as he said, “Looks like a buggy with three or four riders trailing it. Coming from that direction, you know what that means.”
“Yes,” Glory said. Her voice had gone flinty, too. “Harry Elston is coming to pay us a visit.”
CHAPTER 4
The gray-haired woman came closer. She said to Glory, “You should go inside, señora. Let Gabe deal with Señor Elston.”
Her lined face was nut brown, her eyes dark and piercing. Luke couldn’t tell for sure how old she was. She could have been anywhere from fifty to eighty.
“I’m not going to let Harry Elston make me hide in the house, Teresa,” Glory said. “Whatever he wants, he can deal with me.”
“Señor MacCrae would not want you doing this, señora.”
“I think I’m a better judge of what Sam would want,” Glory snapped. “After all, I was his wife.”
Luke saw the older woman’s already grim mouth draw down into an even thinner line, but Teresa didn’t say anything else. Luke had a hunch that she had been Sam MacCrae’s cook, housekeeper, something like that, quite possibly for many years, ever since MacCrae’s first wife passed away.
It wouldn’t surprise him if Teresa had been in love with MacCrae, too, although as a servant she’d probably kept that emotion to herself. She was bound to resent Glory for coming in and first marrying MacCrae, then taking over the ranch after his death.
Glory turned away dismissively from the older woman and strode across the ranch yard toward the approaching buggy with its trailing riders. The buggy was close enough now for Luke to see that a thickset man in a gray tweed suit and narrow-brimmed dark brown hat was handling the reins. That would be Harry Elston, he thought, owner of the Lazy EO.
The men on horseback behind the buggy rode with easy, arrogant slouches. They wore range clothes, but they were all armed with holstered handguns, which meant they weren’t regular cowboys. A man who worked with cows all day from horseback generally didn’t pack an iron, just a rifle for shooting snakes or coyotes.
Luke glanced over at Gabe Pendleton, who looked pretty tense.
“Is this fixing to be trouble?” Luke asked quietly.
“Don’t know.” Pendleton bit out the words with his jaw clenched. “See that lean fella with the sandy hair?”
Luke knew Pendleton was referring to one of the riders following Elston’s buggy. He said, “I see him.”
“That’s Verne Finn. You know the name?”
“Vaguely,” Luke said. “He’s a gunman, isn’t he?”
“Hired killer,” Pendleton said. “He’s a backshooter and a bushwhacker, but the law’s never been able to prove it. All of his face-to-face killings have come in fair fights. He’s fast enough to have lived this long.”
Actually, Verne Finn was a rather mild-looking hombre, Luke thought. But that didn’t mean anything. Some of the most dangerous men he’d come across in his career as a bounty hunter hadn’t looked all that threatening.
“If you want to,” Pendleton went on, “drift on into the barn. You’ll be safe enough there if any trouble starts.”
“I never said I was worried about it,” Luke drawled. “Just curious, that’s all. Reckon I’m fine where I am.”
Pendleton grunted, and when he glanced over at Luke there was a little more respect in his eyes.
“All right,” he said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Elston brought the buggy to a halt. Glory was about fifteen feet away and slightly to one side. She said, “What are you doing here, Mr. Elston?”
“That’s not a very friendly greeting, Mrs. MacCrae,” Elston said. He was in his forties, with a beefy face and short, grizzled hair under his hat.
“It wasn’t intended to be,” Glory said. “Actually, though, I’m glad you’re here.”
Elston looked a little surprised by that comment. He said, “Oh? Why is that?”
Glory pointed to the corpse still draped over the saddle a few yards away.
“You can take the body of one of your rustlers to the undertaker and save my men the trouble of having to do it.”
Luke had seen the glances the horsemen had thrown toward the corpse and taken note of the way some of them stiffened in their saddles. That told him they recognized the horse or the dead man or both. That was all the proof he needed that the rustlers had been working for Elston, although it was hardly the sort of evidence that would stand up in a court of law.
Elston’s already florid face flushed an even deeper shade of red as he scowled angrily. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came over to pay a friendly visit, not to be accused of something.”
“Since when are we friends?” Glory demanded.
Elston fiddled with the reins and said, “We’re neighbors—”
“That doesn’t make us friends.”
“Blast it, woman, you’ve got me all wrong!” Elston burst out. “You act like I’m trying to cause trouble for you, when all I wanted to do was make sure you’re all right over here. It hasn’t been that long since you lost poor Sam—”
“I’ll thank you not to mention my husband,” Glory said coldly.
Elston tried to defend himself by saying, “Sam and I were friends—”
Glory interrupted him again.
“That’s funny. There you go again with that friend business. I never heard my husband refer to you as anything except a no-good range hog.”
One of the men with Elston—but not Verne Finn, Luke noted, Finn stayed calm and apparently emotionless—prodded his horse forward and said hotly, “That’s just about damned well enough from a—”
Gabe Pendleton took a step and said, “You’d better think long and hard about what you’re gonna say next, Carter.”
The gunman sneered at him.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re actin’ like you’re fast on the draw, cow nurse. If you think you can beat me, you’re welcome to try your luck.”
“I don’t have to outdraw you,” Pendleton said. “There are a dozen rifles trained on the whole sorry lot of you right now.”
Luke had spotted four or five rifle barrels poking from the barn and the bunkhouse. Maybe Pendleton was bluffing about there being a dozen, or maybe Luke just couldn’t see them from where he was. Either way, the tension in the air ratcheted up a few notches. Luke could almost smell the blood that was about to be spilled.
“Carter, stop it!” Elston’s voice held a note of desperation as it lashed out. If bullets started to fly, he’d be right in the middle of them. “Back off, you hear me? Now!”
Clearly, Carter didn’t appreciate being ordered around like that, nor did he like the idea of backing off from the confrontation with Pendleton. But he rode for the Lazy EO brand, and Harry Elston was the boss.
“Another day,” he growled at Pendleton.
“You call it,” the MC foreman said.
Carter backed his horse until he was behind the buggy again. Then Glory said, “If you don’t have any real business here, Mr. Elston, I’ll bid you good day.”
“Hold on a minute,” Elston said. He was going to try to save a little face by refusing to be dismissed that easily, Luke thought. The rancher went on: “What did you mean by accusing me of rustling that way? And who’s that dead man?”
“Gabe,” Glory said as she inclined her head toward the corpse.
Pendleton stepped over to the mount, took hold of its reins, and turned it so the dead man’s head was toward the visitors. Grasping the corpse’s hair, Pendleton lifted the head so the face was visible.
“That’s Dave Randall,” Elston said. “I fired him last week. So whatever mischief he was up to today, you can hardly blame me for it.”
“I suppose the rest of your men will vouch for the fact that you fired Randall?” Glory asked.
“I don’t see why not. That’s the way it happened.”
Glory’s contemptuous snort made it clear she didn’t believe a word Elston was saying. The man’s face flushed again, but he kept a visibly tight rein on his temper.
“You can take the body to Painted Post anyway,” Glory said. “Since he used to work for you.”
Curtly, Elston jerked his head toward the body. One of his men rode forward and took the reins from Pendleton, then led the horse as he went back to join the others.
“I’m sorry for the hard feelings between us, Mrs. MacCrae,” Elston said. “It doesn’t have to be this way, you know.”
“Yes,” Glory said, “I’m afraid it does.”
Elston lifted the buggy horse’s reins. He clucked to the animal and turned it, then slapped the reins against its rump and drove out of the yard. The man who had taken charge of Randall’s horse rode southeast, toward Painted Post. The other gunmen followed Elston as he headed back northwest, presumably toward his ranch.
Verne Finn was a little slower about turning his horse than the others were. As he lingered slightly, his hooded gaze studied Luke, seeming to appraise him. Obviously, Finn was curious about this newcomer to the MacCrae ranch.
Luke returned the gunman’s regard with a cool, level look of his own. After a moment, the corners of Fin
n’s mouth quirked in an almost invisible smile. He lifted his left hand, touched a finger to the brim of his hat in a mocking salute, then wheeled his horse and rode after the others.
“What was that about?” Pendleton asked.
“Just taking stock,” Luke said.
“You sure you and Finn aren’t acquainted?”
“I never laid eyes on the man until today.”
Pendleton still looked a little doubtful, but he didn’t press the issue. Instead, he turned to Glory and said, “I can ride to Painted Post and tell the deputy sheriff who’s usually around there about the brand-blotting.”
“What good would it do?” Glory asked, and for the first time in the admittedly short period Luke had known her, he thought she sounded tired. She went on: “Be careful for the next few days. This is the first time we’ve killed one of them. They may strike back at us.”
“We didn’t actually kill that fella,” Pendleton pointed out as he looked at Luke.
“It happened on our range, and Mr. Jensen is our guest. I don’t think that’ll make any difference to Elston’s bunch of hired killers.”
“Probably not,” Pendleton admitted.
Glory summoned up a smile for Luke and invited, “Come on in the house.”
She led him through an arched gateway and a little garden to the big wooden door. The old woman, Teresa, had already vanished back into the house. Luke and Glory stepped into the shady interior where the air held a welcome hint of coolness behind thick adobe walls.
“Would you like a drink?” Glory asked as she loosened her hat’s chin strap and took it off. She placed the hat on a heavy table that gleamed with polish.
“That sounds good.”
“Being a proper Scotsman, my late husband had an ample supply of fine Scotch.”
Luke smiled and said, “Even better.”
He looked around the room while Glory went to a massive sideboard to pour the drinks. The furnishings appeared comfortable without being ostentatious. Heavy, overstuffed chairs, big tables, woven rugs on the floor, a fireplace that dominated one side of the room. A long-barreled flintlock rifle and a saber hung on pegs over the fireplace, flanked by a pair of flintlock pistols.
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